As a child, Hono Ozawa was truant. Her mother Chie Ozawa helped her through the issue. They are a mother-daughter team of councilors using their experiences to listen to parents and children handling truancy issues talk about their feelings. The daughter and the mother work together, listening to their clients, who are parents and children and helping them handle their feelings. This type of counseling is very rare in Japan.

Hono, who lives in Nagoya, stopped going to junior high school as soon as she entered it because she distrusted her teacher. At first, Chie could not accept that her daughter was not going to school. Chie and Hono fought every day. Chie blamed herself and was constantly worried. She had no one to turn to for advice. She decided it would be better for her to be with her daughter and took a one-month leave of absence from her work. During the leave of absence, she obtained a psychological counselor qualification because she wanted to know how her daughter felt. She later became a certified NLP Master Practitioner and an ACE-accredited Child Minder.

Hono loves to draw. Six months after Hono stopped going to school, she started to participate in weekly experiential learning classes at a design school she had found. Chie decided that she would support her daughter in this when the teacher at the design school praised her drawing ability. After graduating from junior high school, Hono entered and graduated from the design school without missing any classes. Today, she works as an illustrator.

One of Chie's acquaintances visited Chie together with the acquaintance's daughter to ask for advice because Chie had experience with a truant daughter. This led her to start providing counseling services to parents and children dealing with truancy problems, involving Hono in these activities. As their counseling services became popular through word of mouth, they opened the official Jibunrashisa Shoten (individuality store) LINE account in 2022. They began providing parent and child counseling services. They named the service based on their thinking that going to school is not an objective, and it is important that both truant children and their parents live their own lives. The main activity of Jibunrashisa Shoten is visiting clients' homes to provide counseling in person. The first session costs 1000 yen for 90 minutes, and after that it is 9000 yen for a 60-minute session or 12,000 yen for a 90-minute session. They charge fees to make sure their clients are invested in the sessions. In the first 45 minutes of the first 90-minute session, Chie talks to the parents while Hono talks to the children. For the remaining 45 minutes, the two counselors talk to both the parents and children together. When counseling children, Hono tries to first establish an environment that facilitates conversation with the child, for example, by trying to find common ground or playing a game. That is why many children openly talk about their feelings to Hono, telling her not to tell their parents what they said. The counselors aim to help parents and children discover each other's individuality and encourage parents and children to express their feelings to each other. Additionally, they provide counseling to parents and children experiencing truancy issues through lectures and free consultations for single parents at markets held in the city. Over 80 groups of parents and children have sought advice from Chie and Hono in the last two years. They have 15 to 20 groups at the moment, the length of time they provide counseling services to their clients varies individually. Most of their clients come from the three Tokai prefectures: Aichi (their home), Mie and Gifu.

There are many different reasons for truancy, such as problems with friends. According to results of a fiscal 2023 survey by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, there are more than 340,000 truant students in Japan, a record high. "Many parents do not allow children to make choices, becoming involved in everything," said Chie. Situations like this intimidate children, preventing them from returning to school. "I was a parent like them," she recalls. It is important for children to think about things themselves, make choices and live their own lives. "The thing that makes me happiest is when the children I counsel become able to make their own decision," said Hono. Chie's dream is to publish a book that compiles her experiences. She thinks sharing her failures will save people who are currently experiencing truancy issues. Her dream is coming true now.

Truancy is a major issue in Japan today. You rarely find consultation services provided by a mother-daughter team. It is very interesting. When clients receive advice from both a parent and a child who herself struggled with truancy, it is very encouraging. We would like to commend them for facing the issue sincerely because they obtained counselor qualifications that are difficult to get. They say that a bright future and infinite potential awaits you even if you do not go to school. Their words encourage the next generation.